User:16912 Rhiannon/Blackboard Inc. History and acquisitions

Early history
Blackboard Llc. was founded in 1997 by Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky and began as a consulting firm contracting to the non-profit IMS Global Learning Consortium. Chasen and Pittinsky started Blackboard upon leaving KPMG Consulting where they both had worked as part of the company’s Higher Education practice. In 1998, the company merged with CourseInfo LLC, a small software provider that originated at Cornell University and was founded by Daniel Cane and Stephen Gilfus. The combined company became known as Blackboard Inc. The first line of e-learning products was branded Blackboard CourseInfo, until the CourseInfo brand was dropped in 2000. The product was initially given to teachers for free to try out and then was licensed to schools. The new company made a profit in its first year, and its sales in 1998 approached US$1 million. Other early products included Blackboard Classroom and Blackboard Campus.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company had become the leading learning management system This expansion was initially funded through venture capital from a number of investors, including Pearson PLC, Dell, AOL, The Carlyle Group and Novak Biddle Venture Partners.

Overseas expansion began in the early 2000s, growing to include Asia, Australia and Europe in its service area. In particular, through a partnership with a Chinese education company, Blackboard also began providing software services to many universities in China.

Blackboard went public in June 2004 under the stock market ticker BBBB. Sale of shares in the initial public offering raised an estimated $70 million for the company, making it the second-most successful technology IPO of that year.

Company expansion and buyout
In 2006, Blackboard completed the acquisition of its largest competitor, WebCT Inc, enlarging its share of the higher education market to between 65 and 75 percent.

Over the next five years, the company invested in a series of new products and acquisitions, expanding beyond the learning management system market. New products released during this time include Blackboard Xythos, Blackboard Connect, Blackboard Mobile, Blackboard Collaborate, and Blackboard Analytics.

By 2011, Blackboard was used by over half of colleges and universities in the US. On July 1, 2011, Blackboard agreed to a $1.64 billion buyout by an investor group led by Providence Equity Partners, which was completed on October 4. Following the sale, Providence Equity Partners merged Edline, its K-12 learning system, with Blackboard. Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage.

New leadership
Jay Bhatt succeeded Chasen as CEO of the company in October 2012. Bhatt came to the company after serving as the CEO of Progress Software. As CEO of Blackboard, Bhatt combined the company's product portfolio into offerings called solutions. He also restructured the company by market (including North America and International) rather than by product, and consolidated product development and management under new executives. It was reported in July 2014 that approximately 500 of Blackboard's 3,000 employees were hired between 2013 and 2014.

The company's key focuses under Bhatt's leadership have been: student-driven learning solutions; investing in Blackboard Learn, the company's core product; integrating the company’s portfolio of products; and building education service offerings, such as online program management. In 2013, the company introduced a platform to host massive open online courses called MOOCs, and it introduced student profiles and databases in 2014. Bhatt also changed the company's strategy for acquiring new businesses. Rather than purchasing competitors, Bhatt has stated he prefers to acquire companies based on their innovations.

In July 2014, Bhatt announced multiple product changes, including a redesign of Blackboard's UX to an interface resembling iOS, expanding the deployment options of Blackboard Learn to include self-hosted, managed hosting and public cloud, and improvements to Blackboard's mobile app.

As of July 2014, Blackboard serves approximately 17,000 schools and organizations. It holds the highest share of the education market with 75 percent of colleges and universities and more than half of K-12 districts in the US using its products and services.

As of September 2014, Blackboard had acquired MyEdu, Perceptis, and CardSmith, and Requestec under Bhatt's leadership. The acquisitions reflected Bhatt's new acquisition strategy of making investments that serve students and will lead to innovations in Blackboard's core teaching and learning products.

Mergers and acquisitions
Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions.

In 2001, Blackboard acquired AT&T Campuswide and CEI Special Teams, developers of ID cards that can be used for campus commerce and security. The following year, the company purchased George Washington University's course management software, Prometheus. Blackboard acquired SA Cash, a student ID rewards program developed by Student Advantage, in 2003.

In October 2005, the company announced that it was acquiring WebCT Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry. Through the acquisition, Blackboard gained over 1,400 institutional customers as well as 274 employees. In the two years leading to the merger, Blackboard's most significant growth was in the elementary and secondary education client sector. According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent.

Following the purchase of WebCT, Blackboard purchased content management company, Xythos Software, Inc in November 2007. The company expanded into the area of emergency phone and email notifications with the acquisition of NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect. In 2009, the acquisition of ANGEL Learning, an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies. In July of the same year, the company purchased the Stanford University student-run TerribyClever Design, LLC, whose iPhone application provided the basis for the Blackboard Mobile division to develop the service for other university campuses. Blackboard then acquired Saf-T-Net, provider of mobile alerts for K-12, in March 2010.

In July 2010, the company purchased both Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc., providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, to form Blackboard Collaborate. The purchase of iStrategy, a data analysis firm, in December of 2010 led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics. Blackboard Student Services was developed from Presidium Inc., a provider of administrative and academic support services, which Blackboard acquired in January 2011.

The company merged with Edline, a provider of online communications software for K-12 schools, after Edline's owner, Providence Equity Partners, acquired Blackboard in October 2011. Edline was renamed Blackboard Engage in June 2012.

In March 2012 Blackboard acquired two companies based on Moodle's open-source software: Baltimore-based Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia. The two companies became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division.

In January 2014, Blackboard made its first acquisition under the leadership of Jay Bhatt with the purchase of MyEdu, an Austin-based online education company, which provides education and career planning tools for college students. The acquisition was seen as Blackboard stepping toward a new focus on student-based software according to The Washington Post. The acquisition was followed by the purchase of Perceptis, a provider of help desk and administrative services, in July 2014. In August 2014, Blackboard acquired CardSmith, a company that offers cards for student credentials and on-campus payments. Through the acquisition, Blackboard acquired 200 customers as well as cloud-based services for its Blackboard Transact product. In September 2014, The company acquired Requestec, a provider of Web-based Real Time Communication (WebRTC) technology that allows IP telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging directly within desktop and mobile browsers.